US-Canada: Can a trade deal get done?
26:28 Share

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility. There

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.

Or a new smartwatch.

Apply now at verizon.com slash verizonvisa card. Application required. Subject to credit approval. Must be a Verizon mobile account owner or manager or Fios account owner. See verizon.com slash verizonvisa card for terms and restrictions. The Verizon Visa Signature Card is issued by Secret Bank pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc.

Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Sam Fenwick. Coming up today, why barges are stuck and ships delayed across Europe. In the end, it's what's in those containers. It's about food. It's about medicine. It's about crucial materials that we need for our production in Europe.

In tariff news, there's been a breakthrough in transatlantic trade. Can Canada get a similar deal? And despite being the world's biggest cassava producer, Nigeria is still buying the crop from abroad. Even at times, we might not be able to complete the planting because of the stress and the hard labour. If we use machines, planting, agriculture will be very, very easy.

So let's begin today with the news of a breakthrough in transatlantic trade. The US and the UK have agreed a deal that slashes tariffs on British car exports and removes duties on aircraft parts, a move both countries hope will boost business across the Atlantic. But steel tariffs are staying put for now as negotiations continue.

Nigel Redwood is the CEO of Revolution Race Cars. He told us that these tariffs had made life very difficult for him to sell his cars into the US market. When they bought in the tariffs to begin with, they were actually cumulative at one point. So,

you'd have the 25% car tariff, you'd then have a 25% steel tariff, you'd then have an original 2.5%. So certainly we didn't sell a car during that period. But Trump then announced that it would just be the single 25% tariff. So we've had to deal with that for the last couple of months. So certainly the consumers in the USA have had to pay a high price during that period.

Meanwhile, Canada is hoping for a similar breakthrough. It's just scrapped attacks on major US tech companies in an effort to revive trade talks with Washington. Well, joining us now is Christophe Bondy, a partner specialising in international disputes at Steptoe LLP in London and also a former Canadian trade negotiator.

Let's first of all look at the US-UK deal, Christophe. Is it a meaningful step, do you think, towards greater transatlantic trade or more of a symbolic win?

I think it's more of a symbolic one. It's obviously important for the industries involved. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, in relation to typical international trade agreements, what they're doing is just picking off a few, you know, key irritants issues, starting from the point that tariffs were imposed on

In the first place, in somewhat, you know, suspect circumstances, you know, international trade, international security or national security bases, for example. So, you know, these are very limited agreements compared with traditional international trade agreements. And one.

What Canada is seeking to do with the removal of digital services tax is just to get that one irritant out of the way in a very practical way so that discussions can begin. But it's certainly not a certain kind of rules based approach. Do you think that the dropping of the digital services tax, as you mentioned, will be enough to get Donald Trump back online? Yes.

Well, it's had the effect of, you know, relaunching negotiations. And the U.S. was saying on Friday, I think it was going to begin a special 301, their internal investigation into alleged unfair behavior. So, you know, it's had the effect of launching negotiations.

relaunching those discussions and avoiding additional tariffs being imposed. Not that they would have been, frankly, legally justified, but in any event, and

I think what that discussion between Canada and the U.S. will focus on is, again, trying to mitigate the effect of some of the bigger ticket items, tariffs that have been imposed by the U.S. Right now, they're functioning. It's certainly the steel and aluminum is a big one. And the rules imposed today.

that anything that wasn't covered by USMCA would be subject to a significant tariff. That's also going to be addressed, I assume. How do you think it made Mark Carney look? Because he seemed to do, as it appeared, a kind of very quick U-turn on that tax, on that digital tax.

I wouldn't say it's a quick U-turn in the sense that this is a longstanding policy issue. It's been an irritant for or an issue on the table through the OECD for a long time, along with a global minimum tax. And don't forget, just one of the first things that Donald Trump did in his new administration is back in February set his sights on attacking the digital services tax. There was a provision in the current bill before the U.S. Congress relating to the

surtaxes on international investors in the United States because of alleged unfair international taxes imposed by their home jurisdictions. They've now withdrawn that provision, but that was further to discussions at the G7 about the G7 members agreeing that the flats 15% tax would not apply to U.S. companies. So this is part of a much longer exchange on the policy issue, but

in a pragmatic way to take this off the table and get the discussion going. It's, I guess, always the art of the possible when you're dealing with a party that is, you know, throwing its weight around, frankly. Just briefly, because we're coming to the end of our conversation here, do you see a shift in US trade policy towards its more traditional allies? Do you expect Washington to keep playing hardball, though, on some of those issues like steel and aluminium?

Well, we've certainly seen a shift in U.S., traditional U.S. trade policy towards a kind of deals-based limited approach, you know, away from a rules-based approach.

What they will do on steel and aluminium, I think, remains to be seen. But it's having, don't forget, a very strong negative impact on both the Canadian and the US economy. The economies are so integrated and in areas like automotive production, all you're doing by keeping those kinds of tariffs in place is making North American production much less competitive. So that is really...

really going to be the focus of the talk. We need to work together in order to make our

both of our economies work better and be able to withstand international competition. That's, I think, going to be the message. Thank you very much. Christophe Bondy there from Steptoe LLP and a former Canadian trade negotiator. Well, in other tariff news, shipping and logistics companies say that Donald Trump's unpredictable trade policies are a major reason Europe's ports are now facing their worst supply chain congestion since the pandemic. Back

Backlogs are piling up in major hubs like Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg as shifting trade routes add to the chaos. Meanwhile, there's also unusually low water levels on the Rhine, which is making it even harder for barges to move goods. Let's talk now to Peter Sand. He's the chief analyst at Zedetna. It's a freight and logistics company. He joins us today from Denmark. Thanks for being with us, Peter. So how bad is the congestion at the moment across Europe's ports?

It's been bad for the entirety of 2025. So those ports are really struggling to keep up with incoming goods, having seen demand grow by 9% last year and 6% year-to-date. They are a little bit, say, caught between one rock and many two hard places,

So they are not flowing the way they should, those fluent supply chains into North Europe and, well, London Gateway for that matter as well. And what's the biggest reason? Is it the tariffs and the trade negotiations or is it the kind of weather and the issues with the Rhine?

I think it's probably anything but the tariffs in this case. But it's a lot of factors coming into the perfect storm, so to speak. So we had a lot of, say, labor-related issues in France and also Belgium and Netherlands earlier in the year. We have definitely also seen the change operationally from the new container shipping alliances being set up, companies that

worked together have now needed to shift partners, so to speak. That have also caused some issues for the terminals and ports to handle that. And then, of course, also weather-related issues like the low water level in River Rhine that have prevented those containers to leave the port of Rotterdam as fast as they would normally do

And that's when ports seem to clock up and work less efficiently. So it's a lot of small bits and pieces that have come together for northern European ports to struggle throughout this year. Rotterdam, Europe's largest seaport and the biggest outside Asia, handles around 30,000 ocean-going vessels and 130,000 river barges every year. The port's director of container...

containers, Hannah Stelzen, told me it's a very uncertain time for shipping worldwide. I believe that we will remain in a phase of highly uncertain times, yeah, in terms of geopolitics, but also, of course, other developments that we do see. And in a port, we do see all those discussions and developments coming back

very quickly. So that is something that we believe will continue. What's happening globally is often seen first in the supply chain and the operations of ports like yours. I truly believe that, yes. What are the things that really concern you about the industry at the moment? With all the panic there is in the world,

I do hope that we will remain to work on reliable products, on efficient and sustainable products, because in the end, what we do it for is to secure supply chains to our societies.

And that is a crucial task, right, in serving as major transportation modes for crucial goods. In the end, it's what's in those containers. It's about food. It's about medicine. It's about crucial materials that we need for our production in Europe. I truly believe that there will be different times again, but these are times where

where we're at a peak of geopolitical developments and technological and sociocultural developments, and they're all peaking at the same time. Yeah, I mean, it's been a really challenging five years for the shipping industry, hasn't it? Since the pandemic, things haven't really settled down. Yeah, indeed.

That was Hannah Stelzen from the port of Rotterdam. Peter Sand is still with us. Do you see these problems prompting a rethink perhaps of supply chain strategies among European businesses?

Yes and no. I think always the beneficial cargo owners, those that import goods produced anywhere else in the world into the European ports, but also those European exporters that have just-in-time supply chains, they need to run efficiently. They are constantly looking for alternatives to what are we doing today when they can see supply chains clock up like they do right now, but

problem is that they are not easily available and they always come with a higher price tag than the one they got right now. So when's it going to rain? When might the Rhine fill up? Well, I think probably we will see the Northern European ports

having a hard time throughout 2025 because right now should be a slack season for them, not only in terms of a low water level in River Rhine, but also from goods traditionally coming in from the Far East in the third quarter. So I think this probably may just be an early warning shot fired across the bow before we get into real troubles in the third quarter.

low water level or not. What investments do you think need to happen to improve Europe's resilience? I think a lot of it contains investments in hinterland connectivity, in making sure that you can actually get the ports emptied and the container yachts inside the port parameters, get them emptied as faster than you do today. Because it's not

Only ships arriving a little bit too late or off schedule that causes problem here. But it's also shippers, importing shippers, not picking up the cargo as fast as they would otherwise do. So you basically have what we call a

to high utilization rate of those yards. So work on the hinterland connectivity, whether that's better access to rail exports out of the port parameters or it's in the form of more trucks

That is definitely what you need. And then, of course, also in the end, making use of the efficient ports available so you do not end up overloading those key imports regions like the port of Rotterdam or the port of Antwerp, for instance. There are other options around. So maybe you want to explore that as well. Peter Sand, thank you very much there from Zanetta Logistics joining us today from Denmark.

Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility.

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.

Or a new smartwatch.

Apply now at verizon.com slash verizonvisa card. Application required. Subject to credit approval. Must be a Verizon mobile account owner or manager or Fios account owner. See verizon.com slash verizonvisa card for terms and restrictions. The Verizon Visa Signature Card is issued by Secret Bank pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. This is World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Sam Fenwick.

Cassava is one of the world's most versatile crops. It's a lifeline for food security in many places, but global demand for cassava is rising fast. Nigeria grows more of this root vegetable than any other country in the world. So why isn't the country cashing in on its cassava? Laura Hyten-Gins has been finding out.

This is Peckham, south-east London, also known as Little Lagos for its big British-Nigerian community. I'm heading to Bim's African Food Store, a local institution.

Okay. And you eat with chicken. Five, six, seven different cassava products. Besides the edible root, which is kind of like an elongated potato, cassava can be processed into a wide range of products, including starch, flour, a coarse grain called gari, and a dough called fufu, as well as ethanol and even glue. Thank you so much. Lovely to meet you. Okay, bye.

Cassava's importance to diets around the world is not to be underestimated. Professor Lateef Sani is a world-leading expert on the crop. In sub-Saharan Africa developing countries, a lot of people eat cassava. If you took cassava away, how would it affect the world's population? I must tell you, if you take cassava away, it's like a third world war.

World War III. In terms of survival, it's going to be tough. Defending against this kind of devastation is Nigeria's army of smallholder farmers who number in the millions and who do their work manually.

Mrs Kemi uses a machete on her cassava farm in Ogun State, southwestern Nigeria. We labour a lot. Even at times, we might not be able to complete the planting because of the stress and the hard labour. If we use machines, planting, agriculture will be very, very easy. But I don't have enough money to afford it because we cannot apply our whole capital on machines alone. Hmm.

Most smallholder farmers are limited by a lack of access to machinery. And while Nigeria is the world's largest producer of cassava by far, the market is highly fragmented. The global cassava export industry is worth about $3.5 billion, but Nigeria accounts for only about $1 million of that.

Dr. Mustafa Bakano, head of the Nigeria Cassava Growers Association, wants to turn things around. We first need to know who are the farmers. By the time we are able to identify their farmlands, we are able to know what exactly is it they need and what exactly is the challenges.

His plan is to organise all smallholder farmers into clusters through which they can access bank loans to buy processing machinery, which they can later pay off due to their increased yields. I think the future should be looking very, very prosperous if I am allowed to implement this new framework. I'm looking at up to 10 years to have a sufficiency in terms of the processing plants across the country. Some clusters have already been set up, but aggregating millions of farmers is a gargantuan task.

Professor Lateef Sani is optimistic it can be done. Cassava is an engine of growth. And if everybody works together, farmers, processors, marketers, are assured that they will have opportunity of making more money from cassava and enhancing their livelihood. The potential of cassava isn't in dispute. If successfully harnessed, it could transform the Nigerian economy.

That was Laura Heighton-Gins reporting for us there. Now, all this talk of tariffs and global trade tensions is really starting to take its toll on the US dollar. It's just posted its worst first half performance of the year since 1973. Rachel Winter explains.

is partner and investment manager at Killick & Co. and she joins us now. So I think the dollar is down by more than 10% this year. Is this all down to tariffs, do you think? Or is there also some concern about rising US debt levels too?

It's due to both of those things. So historically, the dollar has very much been viewed as a safe haven. So when people have been worried about the economy, they have been very comfortable holding dollars. Over the last few months, that has been less the case. And we have seen investors looking for other safe havens. And these have been other currencies such as the euro and the yen. So people have been selling dollars and buying those other currencies. And that has led to a weakening of the dollar.

For the past few years, we've been talking on the programme about the high value of the dollar and the impact that that has on countries which buy stuff from the US. If the dollar is down 10%, what does it mean for those countries that buy stuff from the US?

Well, it could potentially be good news. So it makes those things they're buying from the US appear cheaper. And actually, it could also be good news for companies based in the US who are big exporters, because they should see a higher level of demand. So it's not all bad.

And when we talk about that 10%, what's it gone from and what was it before? How big is that? Well, it depends what currency you're measuring against. So often when people say it's down 10%, they would usually be measuring it against a basket of other very popular currencies. So it will be against a combination of other major currencies, such as the euro, the pound and the yen. How significant is it that it's...

worst half-year performance since 1973. I mean, that seems like a long time ago. Oh, it's huge. Yeah, it's very significant. And actually, we expected the dollar to strengthen during Trump's presidency. Reason being, when you get inflation, which we expected to happen as a result of the tariffs, you then tend to get higher interest rates in the country with the inflation, and that tends to push the currency higher. But at the moment, we're seeing US inflation being lower than we expect

Therefore, interest rates might remain lower and that is contributing to a weaker dollar. And so then how quickly might it regain some of that loss? Very hard to say. So it has weakened very quickly. Depends what happens, I suppose, with the trade talks. Exactly. Yeah. So it strengthened very quickly after the US election in November and then it turned around within just a couple of months and it could easily go the other way very quickly. So it's very difficult to know.

Rachel Winter, Partner and Investment Manager at Killer King Co. Thank you very much for joining us on World Business Report. Now, have you ever tried to scam a scammer, replying to their dodgy messages or stringing them along on a phone call? I have tried it a couple of times. Well, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has taken the idea to the next level and they've rolled out an army of AI-powered bots, complete with Aussie accents, backstories, to chat with scammers in fake calls and texts.

But can it really prevent fraud? Well, that is something I asked Dali Kafar, the bots creator and the CEO of App8, the company behind the technology. I asked him how it works in practice. We've built an army of what we call perfect victim bots. So these are AI personas, in fact, thousands of them with different accents, different ages, different genders, different personalities, different attitudes even to the colours themselves.

and they can be really speaking very different languages and different dialects. And these army of realistic AI bots are really designed and specifically built to engage scammers across phone calls or messaging platform. And their objective is really to waste the scammers' time and waste the resources of these scammers who are placing calls or engaging with them.

So you're effectively scamming the scammers? That's exactly it. We're flipping the tables against the scammers and we're scamming the scammers. And the idea is really to disrupt their business model, indeed. So it won't be that they will prevent attacks on the bank. They will go out and gather intelligence, really, and waste their time so that they can't attack the bank. Exactly right. So this is pretty much a different way of really approaching the problem of scam, right? We know that the scam problem is a massive challenge.

And so far, for decades, really, we've been struggling with this problem. And the idea here is that rather than just taking a very reactive way to the issue or to the challenge, it's to be really proactive about it. So it's really a paradigm shift.

by taking really this approach of saying, let's really disrupt their operations and the operations behind these scammers and breaking their business model itself and pretty much really making sure that they have very little capacity to reach out to actual victims.

And wasting their time is one thing, of course, but also making sure that they're occupied, they're busy really engaging with what they think are their perfect victims is the ultimate goal. Essentially, because one scammer busy engaging with what they think is their target is a scammer who's not placing thousands of other calls towards possible genuine customers. And this is really how it's becoming a very proactive approach.

way of preventing the scam to happen. How far are those conversations going? So we had a wide range of really deployments and amongst our deployments we had about conversations that came around for up to an hour and 12 minutes. Really? An hour and 12? Because I've tried this, you know, before when I've been scammed. I've tried to start a conversation with the scammer. But to be honest, I get a bit bored and I just sort of think, OK, I'll leave this now. But an hour and 12 minutes? Yes.

That's a lot. That's a long time. Bots never get really bored, actually. And they very often leave the scammers with a bit of a frustration. So an hour, 12 minutes has been really maximum. We have across different deployments globally that we have roughly 14 minutes of average conversations between scammers and our bots. Yeah.

And have these bots ever been detected by a scammer? Very rarely. I think towards the very, very end of some of the conversations, they can. They can become really a bit aggressive. Scammers kind of being really very, very frustrated past the 15 minutes where they realise that their conversations are completely unproductive or unfruitful. I think they may become to suspect that something's going wrong.

But very rarely they've been really detected as bots as such. In fact, a little bit of a story there, which we actually find really quite amusing to have the scammers obviously kind of being frustrated at our bots. And believe it or not, we're actually probably the only company in the world who keeps track of the number of F-words that the scammers leave after being frustrated when talking to the bots. How many then? We're actually not too far from the 10 million now. Ha ha ha!

Yeah.

Do you think, though, that the scammers are going to adapt to find ways around these bots? Because that's what often happens, doesn't it, with these types of scams, is that they'll just rise up to it and find another way of getting through. Yeah, so it is pretty much the idea of really having these bots operating as a shield, right, which is pretty much about protecting us as consumers from being really in contact with the scammers in the first place. Now, scammers might really start...

feeling the heat and realizing that they're not really making any more profit because their conversation is becoming really so unproductive and they may very well adapt. How they could adapt, it could potentially lead them to these considerations of having even their own bots to be engaging with the Apati bots.

And that's kind of a vision that I'd love to see it happening, essentially because in a world where AI bots would be scamming each other, whether it's really like the scammers bots kind of scamming our Apati bots or Apati bots counter-scamming the AI bots, that's a world where us as consumers and humans are pretty much away from all of that scam conversation.

Bots, scamming bots. There you go. You've heard it all. That was Dalika Four ending that edition of World Business Report, which was produced by Neil Morrow. I'm Sam Fennec. Thank you very, very much for listening.

Over the past 25 years, technology has transformed our world in amazing ways. We've gone from dial-up modems to 5G connectivity and bulky PC towers to AI-powered microchips. Every day, innovators are redefining what's possible. Through it all, Invesco QQQ ETF has connected investors to the forefront of innovation. Access the future today with Invesco QQQ. Let's rethink possibility. There

There are risks when investing in ETFs, including possible loss of money. ETFs risks are similar to those of stocks. Investments in the tech sector are subject to greater risk and more volatility than more diversified investments. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully before investing. Invesco Distributors, Inc.